I'm referring to this question in particular, where the question was clearly not of the best quality, but my answer to it addressed the issues with it. Is it okay to downvote an answer just because a question is bad, even if the answer addresses the issues with the question?

@Mysticial I assumed so; I was just wondering whether basing answer votes on the question was appropriate.
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AstroCBMay 19 '14 at 23:53

In any case, I went ahead and deleted the question. So you'll get your rep back.
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MysticialMay 19 '14 at 23:54

Fair enough; I didn't really care about the minuscule rep drop, but it's fine all the same.
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AstroCBMay 19 '14 at 23:55

It shouldn't have been deleted, there are two undelete votes on it now, so it may come back (just before the end of day had cycled and I wasn't able to give you an upvote).
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Lance RobertsMay 20 '14 at 0:05

5

It didn't actually answer the question, OP asked for "rectangle of stars based on input". So it wasn't actually that helpful to the OP, pretty unlikely to be helpful to anybody that googles it, extremely unhelpful to any teacher that tries to get his student to learn java :)
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Hans PassantMay 20 '14 at 0:05

@LanceRoberts It shouldn't have been deleted, but it did have something like 12 downvotes and 5 holds on it...
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AstroCBMay 20 '14 at 0:10

@HansPassant I addressed the actual structure of the code and added a link for loops in an edit; I will say that it's still probably useless to people trying to learn Java.
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AstroCBMay 20 '14 at 0:12

3

If you think that your answer was useless then why are you surprised that other SO users thought that too???
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Hans PassantMay 20 '14 at 0:14

2

If you think that your answer is not worth googling then why are you surprised that other SO users though that too?
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Hans PassantMay 20 '14 at 0:16

2

@HansPassant I point you to this, on the topic of whether the point is to help people or build a help repository.
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AstroCBMay 20 '14 at 0:19

11

Posting code for homework will 99% get you downvotes (and one will get mine -1 too if I have some). If you think question by itself is useful - provide code that you will write in real product, not something that matches OP's assignment requirements.
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Alexei LevenkovMay 20 '14 at 2:53

I believe there is a badge for positively supported answers to questions with lots of downvotes. It must be there for a reason.
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ouflakMay 20 '14 at 21:23

2

I find it rude actually for people to downvote something without bothering to at least TRY and answer what the asker is asking. Or help him, if he formulated the question badly.This is a Q&A site not 'america's got talent'. I asked how to color just numbers in cxgrid and someone downvotes the question and some even try and close it. So I ask of them : Either you know the answer or you dont.So if you dont, get the f+ off my question and heal your traumas somewhere else. Downvoting something just because youre a m*,wont help me for sure. I think the culture here should be something like on EE.
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user763539May 26 '14 at 23:12

If I got a cent for every time I would have flagged as "Suspected rep whoring" (tho I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist), I would have more cents than all the rep of the rep whores!
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bjb568May 20 '14 at 3:06

@ted - flags like that would be declined because there's nothing mod actionable in it. I'm not a big fan of that turn of phrase either to be honest.
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Flexo♦May 20 '14 at 5:51

8

Dilbert: I disagree. Questions can have negative votes because of bad style (writing). Then, a proper answer still can be given (but is more costly for the writer given that he has to interpret a badly written question). Don't think this qualifies as whoring.
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FooBarMay 20 '14 at 11:42

17

@Ian You are making assumptions about someone's motivation. Sometimes I help people who have "bad" questions because it is clear they are new and struggling and perhaps not a native English speaker, but while others don't understand what they are asking, I do. I really don't care about the points.
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AaronLSMay 20 '14 at 15:21

11

Don't forget the reversal badge which is awarded for providing a high scoring answer (+20) on a bad question (-5)
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Joe WMay 20 '14 at 15:59

3

What a short-sighted view !! If an answer is judged 'on its own merit', then answers to bad questions will be rewarded, hence encouraged. But answering a bad question is already a proof that the answerer is fishing for rep and not caring about adding noise to the site. Noise, not information.
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GameAlchemistMay 21 '14 at 16:01

18

@GameAlchemist, no, you need to stop assuming motives. Most of the time people just want to help people. I'm happy I was able to get answers to my imperfect questions.
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Lance RobertsMay 21 '14 at 16:10

4

@LanceRoberts : :-) :-) You're also assuming motives, Lance, just the optimistic ones vs my more pessimistic ones. When i talk of a bad question, i mean one that shows the O.P. did no effort (and quite often he won't later upvote/comment/accept answer). For people who just got lost at some point while trying and fail to be clear explaining the issue, i happily answer to help.
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GameAlchemistMay 21 '14 at 16:17

6

If it really is "bad" to answer a downvoted question, then why on earth do we have the "Reversal" badge?
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JasonMc92May 21 '14 at 16:31

8

@GameAlchemist grrrrr. short sited view? Stop trying to stop people from answering questions. This is a perversion of the system. The stated goal of this site is ... to build a library of detailed answers to **every** programming question. I would be very interested to hear how discouraging people from answering questions services that goal. My question would simply be was the answer good or bad? If its a bad answer to a bad question fine. If you are just straight ticket downvote all the answers regardless of quality that is quite the d-move.
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nsfyn55May 22 '14 at 20:20

5

"Answers should be voted up or down on their own merits." I think this depends on what exactly we count as "their own merits". There are some very common duplicate questions, and the tooltip on answers says "This answer is not useful." A good answer to a oft-repeated duplicate may be useful to the immediate asker, but it's not so useful to Stack Overflow as a whole, because it dilutes the potential of a canonical answer.
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Joshua TaylorMay 23 '14 at 19:06

1

@javadba If you look at some of the tags that I'm active, I think you'll find that I'm one of those who answers a lot of corner cases and niche targets. If a canonical question/answer would answer another question, then the latter should be closed a duplicate. I'm not sure how continuing with that existing practice is prejudicial (except of course that it favors the existing answers that are already sufficient to new answers that would also be sufficient).
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Joshua TaylorMay 24 '14 at 19:13

1

@javadba No worries. I've just been particularly aware of this lately because of this question in which a 92k rep user posted an answer in tag that the user is active in for which there are lots of duplicates already. I left a comment there explaining that it's really not useful to have so many duplicates, although they can be hard to search for.
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Joshua TaylorMay 24 '14 at 19:31

1

@WarrenDew And, just to wrap up this point :), here's another duplicate that appeared today of that same error message with a (different) 100k user giving an answer.
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Joshua TaylorMay 27 '14 at 18:33

Is it okay to downvote an answer just because a question is bad, even
if the answer addresses the issues with the question?

IMO, one shouldn't punish answers just because a question is of poor quality.

That said, it's often difficult to come up with good answers to bad questions. In order to answer a vague or confusing question, you have to make some assumptions about what the OP is asking. Other readers may make interpret the same question very differently, and in their understanding of the question your answer may seem incomplete, incorrect, or generally unhelpful.

Using the question you linked as an example, the OP cites 4 requirements:

write a program

called StarsRec

prints a rectangle of stars

based on user input

Your answer addresses only one of those four. While I personally agree that item #3 is the most likely point of confusion for the OP, it's also true that anyone who doesn't grok for loops is also likely to have trouble with any or all of the other three.

In other words, don't assume that the downvotes that you received are directly due to the question; they may be response to the quality of your answer.

Just because an answer isn't useful to others googling it, it doesn't mean it wasn't helpful to that individual.

Yes, it would be more ideal that questions were generalized, and less-specific, so they can be applied to, and help a larger population of visitors, but that is not always the case. Sometimes you might have a very specific question and need help with it, and it's nice to have a community you can come to, where someone is willing to help you, regardless of reputation benefits.

Remember the old saying, help without the thought of reward. Stack Overflow is one of the best communities out there, because you actually get answers. That gives people an incentive to come back and untimely drive traffic to the site. So let's not hate on people adding to the community.

Hopefully this Java noob will remember the help he got here, and come back. Maybe he'll ask some more noob questions, but eventually he'll gain experience, and start asking better questions. And then one day, he'll come answer questions for other noobs, and you know why? Because he remembers when he was a noob, and wants to pay it forward for when he got help.

SO has worked to differentiate itself from other sites by explicitly not being a site that strives to answer just one person's question, rather to answer that question for the entire programming community.
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ServyMay 20 '14 at 15:52

16

-1, Being useful to others is pretty much the entire stated goal of SO.
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Andrew MedicoMay 20 '14 at 15:58

4

Where on SO does it say that? I checked stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic and stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask. Neither say this. Actually, it even says on things that can be asked "a specific programming problem". I'm not disagreeing general questions are not better and more helpful to the community, but i don't think my viewpoint here validates a bunch of downvotes.
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SomeRandomDeveloperMay 20 '14 at 18:10

7

@Andrew Medico - his answer was useful to someone apparently. So why would people downvote his answer, if he was trying to help someone. That's just dumb. Down vote the question.
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SomeRandomDeveloperMay 20 '14 at 18:12

I think it's important to realize that as highly as we regard our own judgement, we can't always tell what question will be useful and what question will be useless. As I see it, most of my best answers are to questions that nobody reads; my most-read answers are to simple questions that, in some cases, were poorly written and researched. As it turns out, those questions were useful precisely because they were bad! They were the kind of bad question that lots of people tend to ask when they don't know any better. Now, those people find a SO page and learn how to ask better questions.
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senderleMay 23 '14 at 17:59

Yes it is perfectly acceptable. IMO this is a community site where the community drives behavior and if you choose to use your vote and lower your reputation to discourage answering bad questions with answers that in your opinion aren't needed or you feel the answer is negatively affecting the community than by all means downvote.

If other users feel that the downvote was unwarranted they always have the option to upvote and reverse your feelings on the subject. It's the same reason the highest rated answer to this question is currently at +92 / -15. In mine and 14 other community members it is a poor answer. It doesn't mean it's not right nor that it is wrong, just that we don't agree or approve of it.

There is already a mechanism for the community to directly discourage bad questions: down vote the question.
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SchwernMay 23 '14 at 18:30

2

I just had people upvote my answers as a direct reaction (as stated in the comments) to the downvotes being unfair and directed at the question. The incentive there is that I would have broken even on rep had they NOT downvoted, instead I received +10 for everyone who thinks answers should be treated on their own, and -2 for everyone thinking they are part of the question, and trying to manipulate people's actions using Reputation Points as incentive. Backfire. For the record, I don't want either of those votes, up or down. I want votes based on my answer, not the question.
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peegeJan 8 at 20:16

Lastly, it can be argued that an answer just providing the code is not particularly helpful. The first revision did very little more than just provide the code, but even after your edit, I still doubt it will help OP much (perhaps because I think OP doesn't want to be helped), and is possibly even actively harmful to their learning process, as you're taking the "figuring it out by themselves" part away from them, and you're preventing their teacher from being able to address them not being able to figure it out, as opposed to thinking they're managing, leading to much more serious problems later.

I disagree with your first two points. It's entirely possible to have a useful answer to a bad question, and answering bad questions is not, in itself, a bad thing. There's even a badge for doing it exceptionally well! Evidently SO encourages the very behavior you claim (in your second point) should be downvoted.
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Ted HoppMay 20 '14 at 3:03

3

Salvaging bad questions may occasionally be possible, but this was not one of those cases.
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Andrew MedicoMay 20 '14 at 3:07

6

@TedHopp It depends on the type of bad question. Answering "W U NO WERK" is actively harming the site. Answering a vague and poorly formatted question, then editing it is great for the site.
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bjb568May 20 '14 at 3:08

1

@bjb568 - I agree that it depends on the question. After Dukeling's edit, I no longer have an issue with this answer (and it earns a +1 from me). The earlier wording seemed too absolutist.
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Ted HoppMay 20 '14 at 3:10

3

@TedHopp: given that the reversal badge has only been awarded 179 times, there is not much merit in using it as an example that bad questions can get good answers.
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ninjaljMay 21 '14 at 11:55

2

@ninjalj: Better: Considering that the reversal badge has only been awarded 186 times, and nearly all of those posts are deleted, there is not much merit in using it as an example that bad questions can get good answers.
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DeduplicatorSep 13 '14 at 18:24

There's a segment of the user population on SO that holds that one should not answer bad questions and that when someone answers a bad question then the answer should be downvoted. So these users will say it is okay.

Other users don't agree. So they'll say it's not okay.

However, according to SO's rules, so long as a user does not engage in vote fraud, they can vote whichever way they want. So moderators won't intervene to reverse such votes.

I do that in one circumstance only: I downvote answers to questions which are blatantly off topic - example. The logic is however the same I use for all answers "are they useful?" - in this and similar cases, of course they aren't.
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AD7sixMay 22 '14 at 17:04

1

+1 And sometimes they (the "segment") even start to comment you better delete your answer. To me this very much looks like someone's ego running amok.
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JensGMay 22 '14 at 20:07